The paper examines the concept of consumer competence as a construct of economic education. The aim of this work is the operationalication of the concept for large-scale assessments as part of evaluation in educational systems.Teaching-students of the subject social science were asked about their perception of consumer competence to analyze the concept of consumer skills. The obtained descriptions were categorized with the qualitative content analysis. The resulting categories are considered as a part of consumer competence. Based on this preliminary work these categories have been revised and supplemented by the aid of descriptions in the literature. The so obtained partial constructs are explained in the theoretical part and examined to the possibility, to what extent they can be measured in large-scale assessments. There are collated and used quality criteria for measuring tests for economic education.Some constructs form the basis for the creation of an instrument for measuring the consumption competence. The instrument differs from traditional question forms that mainly capture factual knowledge. A main featur in that it allows a conclusion on the actions of the test takers in certain consumer situations. The instrument was distributed to four 8. classes of secondary school. For validation of the instrument, attitudes, behaviors and knowledge about typical consumption situations for students where used. The results indicate that subjects orient their answers on their own consumer behavior.